2/13/2013-No Gold Watch?

Bob Englehart

According to Wikipedia, the Catholic Church continues to grow in spite of the pedophile scandals. It's a little down in Europe, but in the rest of the world, the church is growing. As of 2007, the church membership was 17 percent of the world's population. It has remained at that number since 1950 when the world's population was smaller. As the population has grown, the church has grown with it.

Numbers are all over the map, but I found this. Poland leads the Catholic world with 56.7 percent regular attendance. The United States has a 42 percent attendance rate and Norway is at the bottom of the list with only 5 percent attendance. Alabama has the highest rate of attendance among the U. S. states. In 2005, Connecticut had a 14.8 percent attendance rate while Maine had 9.9 percent. I guess there are so many other things to do in Maine on a Sunday morning.

I'm not Catholic but a large part of my family is. I can't say they're extreme, but some are regular attendants and send their kids to Catholic schools. I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood. Our Protestant family was the smallest with only two children and we rarely went to church, so as you can see, I've been a freak all of my life.